When Mr. A. Tranjay and I got back, my dad was waiting for us. He was mad I had unlocked the door. I told him I only went to the garage, but he said it was the principle, and if I broke the rule once, that meant I would do it again. Plus, he had found the book, the one Mr. A. Tranjay gave me. He found it under the mattress with my translation on lined paper.
Heed ye well the story of Salamongue Greymouth, Waspkeeper of Hell.
Salamongue was a minor angel, a Keeper of the Word, who, in the days before the great conflagration, stood in public spaces where all could see and condemned his rebellious brethren with snarling, spittle-filled insults. He sought not understanding and peace but to amplify his righteousness over all. He was seedy and fractious and though he pretended to be noble, sought first to glorify himself and would not suffer the insufferable in the name of penitence, nor endure patience, and when the fighting was over, he was cast over the battlements with the insurrectionists.
Oh, Salamongue remembered well that day when he fell aflame through hazy orange clouds to crash upon a land of pus and acid, only to stand again, despicable and deformed. But where Beelzebub and Azazel sat high and fat as princes of Pandaemon, Salamongue—now called Greymouth—was kicked and chided and given naught but the hellwasp farm of Blistermead, on the Venge, for it was a job no other demon would suffer.
Hellwasps, which Paul mistook for locusts in his famous revelation, sup on the suffering of sinners, which they collect with their bite and regurgitate into blister-like sacs. Juvenile wasps, who have not yet grown teeth, concentrate the vomitus into a thick sap by beating their wings over it before sealing the sacs with secretions from their anal glands. After a fermentation of three seasons, the milky sap reaches potency, at which time it’s collected by the Waspkeeper and given to the Brewmaster’s apprentice, who turns it into a bitter relish that the Lords of Discord pour over their meals. It takes but a drop to turn fresh meat foul, a single bite of which will waste a mortal man’s mind.
But the long years of tending Blistermead left their mark on Salamongue, who became ever more despicable. Hellwasps are vicious, needy things, and they nipped and stung him constantly. Stray drops of their acrid vomit burned his skin, which swelled into knots and turned callous, and over the long ages, he developed cankerous growths over his joints and fingers and large humps on his face and back that looked much like the nests of the wasps he tended, and so they burrowed into his callouses and laid their wriggling young in the very pits of his flesh.
It is said that the major demons relished most of all the mead that was fermented from the humps and fingers of Salamongue Greymouth, that it was a pustulous brew, tinged with demon’s blood, that the Brewmaster sealed it in the ash-lined urns of the ancient dead where it aged like fine wine, and that after a century in the cellar it turned the color of charcoal and smelled of sulfurous urine and festering skin.
So it was, every three seasons, as the time of harvesting approached, the great slithering Brewmaster of Pandaemon would find Salamongue hiding among the wasp racks and would poke and prod his sores and pop one to test the yellow milk that ran, and when the sap was near souring and could ripen no more, a great horn would sound and hellhounds would bay and Salamongue would run from Blistermead and across the Venge. He knew that if he could make it to the fells across the Styx, he could disappear into the maze of narrow crypts, where the three-headed beasts could not follow, and the Lords of Discord would tire of the chase and return disappointed to their hollow halls, there being no vintage to press that year.
But if he was caught, Salamongue would be hooked and chained and dragged to the lowest circles of the Mad Keep and his cankers and mounds would be pierced with needles and he would be placed in a great vise and pressed slowly like a grape, and he would scream, and what dribbled from his open sores would be collected in a fermenting vat tended by the Brewmaster himself, who watched each pressing with lips wet from smacking.
Such was the suffering of Salamongue Greymouth. Such was how he lived, with the buzzing and squirming of hundreds of tiny larvae buried in the humps and hills of his back, in his face, and in his fingers.
That was as far as I’d gotten. I didn’t know what all the words meant. Dad was mad I had hid it. I had been bad again. I was bad every day now, it seemed. I had ignored the doctor. I had run away. I wouldn’t listen. Good boys listen, he said. Why did I have to be bad? What had he done? He asked me politely to go to my room. He wanted to talk to Mr. A. Tranjay. He pretended like it wasn’t a big deal, but I could see it on his face.
I dragged my feet all the way upstairs. I stopped in the doorway to my room. I saw my toys on the floor. I had been ordered to pick them up. And do my homework. I hadn’t done either. I stared at the window. I couldn’t see the sun. It was cloudy and hazy. I stood there and stared and realized something about the symbols I had seen on the steam-covered glass. The window was clear, but in my mind I could still see them. No one had cleaned the glass, so that meant they were still there. Traced by a finger. Hidden. I was sure I wasn’t supposed to find them.
It had to be an adult who did it, I figured, because adults don’t get sent to their room and have to stare out at the world making deep sighs while their forehead is pressed to the glass so that their breath makes cool patterns on the pane, like clouds. I hadn’t been scared before. But I was now. If the steam could reveal them, I realized, that meant they were on the inside. And so whoever put them there had been in my room. I hadn’t been worried because I thought maybe they were protecting me. An adult made them and that’s what adults did, right? They protected kids. So that’s why they must be there. Even though I didn’t know why. But then I didn’t know why adults did lots of things.
But the symbols looked exactly like the ones in the book. Exactly. They weren’t traced backwards, like it showed in the instructions. That meant they weren’t there for my protection. They couldn’t be. They weren’t trying to keep something out. They were facing inside. They were keeping something in. In my room. Keeping it from escaping. Keeping it in there with me.
I looked at the dark space yawning under my bed. I looked at my closet door. Had I left it open?
I wavered at the entrance of my room until I heard my dad’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. Then I ran and jumped into bed so that whatever was underneath couldn’t reach up and get me. Dad walked in and sat down next to me. He was very sad. He said I was going to go someplace. Just for a while. He said that he’d talked to Mom and they agreed it was for the best. He said there were other kids there and good people who would take care of me. And he said he had just fired Mr. A. Tranjay, and that he wouldn’t be coming back there anymore. And that that was it, and he couldn’t talk to me about any of it now, and I was grounded and had to stay in my room until it was time to go. No exceptions. That he would bring me food and everything.
“Don’t make me lock you in here,” he said. “Please.”
I nodded.
Then he got up and left and I stayed in bed with the covers over me until Dad brought me dinner. I ate by myself on my bed, looking at my dark, open closet. I couldn’t play my gamepad. I couldn’t watch TV. I had to do homework until I just couldn’t do any more. I couldn’t take Wilson outside, so he just laid on the rug in my room and made sighs like he was just as bored as I was.
The doorbell rang and he ran downstairs barking. A man came, one of our neighbors, I think. I sat on my bed with my bedroom door open and I petted Betsy as I listened to them talk. I was sad because I was never going to see my friend Mr. A. Tranjay again. I liked him.
The man was handing out flyers. Another kid was missing. A kindergartner, he said. A boy named Trevor.
My eyes got real big.
The man said Trevor had disappeared from his own back yard. His house was just down the street. It faced the hollow just like ours. His mom was ten yards away, bagging leaves. The man said it was like an eagle swooped down and took him. He said no one was safe. Our neighbors were organizing a search party. They were going to find the man who was terrorizing the community. The police said they had 24 hours. After that, it usually wasn’t good. The man wanted my dad to help. He said Trevor spoke with a lisp—whatever that is—and he was wearing a red Spider-Man T-shirt and blue jeans and sneakers. He said Trevor’s favorite food was strawberry ice cream and he wanted to be an ice cream man when he grew up because then he could eat ice cream all day long.
I sat on the edge of the bed. My feet dangled over the side and I didn’t care if there was something under there that was going to reach up and get me. Wilson and Betsy were on either side of me. I was supposed to be saying goodbye. My backpack was on the floor. It was all ready. My dad had packed it. Everything I needed. Except my pets. I needed them. And Mom and Dad. I needed them, too. I was going to the doctor.
I looked at Wilson. Wilson looked at me back with his big brown eyes.
“They’re not gonna find him,” I said. “Trevor.”
Wilson said he knew.
“My secret will do terrible things. I stopped it before. But there’s no one to stop it now.”
Wilson said he knew that, too.
“What should I do?” I asked.
Wilson said I was a good boy and I should do what was in my heart, even if it made my dad angry.
I asked why I had to lose my parents. Why Mom left. Why Dad was sending me away.
He said he didn’t think there was a reason, just like there was no reason his people had hurt him so bad his fur didn’t grow back.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
Then Ribbon jumped onto the bed. I called him that because he had a long gray stripe on his side. He was an angry cat. His people had left him and I found him. He walked to the window. He went up on his hind legs and scratched on the glass over and over like he wanted to get out.
“Silly cat,” I said.
I reached for him. Then I saw there was something on the window sill. I unlocked the window. The sky was overcast. I couldn’t see the sun. It would be dark soon. The air was cold and still. I thought I heard something. But I couldn’t see behind me. Maybe my secret wasn’t under my bed or in my closet but on the roof.
There was a blueish pebble on the sill, about the size of a single peanut. I picked it up.
I heard a scratch. Behind me. Now I knew there was definitely something on the house. I turned my head and looked up the sloped roof.
It was the white raven. From my old neighborhood. It had found me.
It made a sound. Not a caw like a crow but still not pretty. It was a big bird. Then it flapped its wings and flew to a nearby tree. The branches swayed when it landed. It called again. I looked at it and I could just tell. It wanted me to follow.
I looked back toward my bedroom door. I could see the stairs and the pictures on the wall. My dad was still talking with our neighbor on the front porch, right in front of the door. The back door was locked and Dad had the key.
I had to help Trevor. I was the only one who could. But I knew I couldn’t do it alone. It was too big for me. And there was only one person who knew about my secret. And about the stag and everything. There was only one person who believed me. And the raven said she would take me to him.
I went to my closet and got an old pair of sneakers that didn’t fit me anymore. It hurt a little to put them on. I got the warm scratchy sweater from the bottom of my bottom drawer and the coat and gloves that my dad had packed in my backpack. He had lots of things in there. Good things to have for a trip, like snacks and my night light. He was a good packer. When I packed, I always forgot my toothbrush. I put on my backpack and opened the window and climbed onto the roof. Pringles started barking at me, but I shushed her. I shuffled along the outside of my room to the place where Dad had been putting all the leaves that blew into the yard. I scooted on my butt to the edge and was about to jump when Pringles came out onto the roof.
“No!” I scolded in a loud whisper.
She wanted to come, but I said she couldn’t. She wouldn’t go inside, though.
“Suit yourself.”
I looked down. I jumped. I was scared at first but it was real fun.
I left a note on my bed. It said:
I’M SORRY I HAVE TO BE BAD ONE LAST TIME
DON’T WORRY
LOVE, ÓLAFUR
I followed the white raven down Newcombe Street and under the big freeway but instead of turning left to go to the library, we turned right and walked past McDonald’s and a bunch of other places I didn’t know until we got to an outdoor shopping center. The asphalt was old and had a bunch of holes and cigarette butts. There weren’t many cars. There were big piles of snow in the corners from when the plows came and it all sat there not melting. It was dark now.
The raven flew down a little street that ran along the far side of the shopping center and landed on a low sign that said: Midnight Gardens Mobile Home Community. There wasn’t any pavement. Just a dirt driveway with gravel and puddles. His name was written in marker on a white strip on the door of unit number five. It wasn’t Mr. A. Tranjay. It was spelled E-T-R-A-N-G-E-R. I felt stupid. Like a dumb kid who couldn’t even spell right. Like there was no way I could ever stop my secret from hurting anyone else and I should just give up and go home and go to the doctor and not try to be the good kind of bad anymore but just the regular kind like all the other kids.
I sniffed. It was cold and my nose was running. I reached in my pocket for tissues. Dad was a good packer. I wished he could have come with me. Someone had spray-painted red symbols on the ground all around. They were just like the ones on my window. The raven stood on a yellow plastic mailbox full of colorful junk mail. She called. She was a big bird. It was loud.
I was about to turn around and go home when the door opened. And there he stood. He was worse than before. A lot worse. He was dressed in sweatpants. He had a cane. He couldn’t hold it still. He could barely stand.
I looked up at him. “It has a little boy named Trevor in kindergarten who likes ice cream and doesn’t say his S’s right.”
He looked at me. He looked at the raven on the mailbox.
She called again, softer.
“I thought you weren’t getting involved,” he said with his head lowered. He wasn’t talking to me.
But the raven just flapped her wings and flew away.
Mr. Étranger watched her fly into the night. He turned to me.
“Do you know her?” I sniffed. My cheeks were red from running in the cold. I could hear a semi pass on the big freeway down by McDonald’s.
“We were lovers. For a while. You’d better come in. There won’t be much time.”
“What’s a lover?” I asked.
I walked in and he shut the door. There was flat carpet, the kind that people get when they’re afraid kids will spill stuff on it, and fake wood on the walls. There wasn’t any TV or anything. Just a single bed with a table next to it. And one lamp. There were boxes all around, just like the one with his books in it. Most of them were empty. Everything smelled like old cheese.
“The raven is her voice.” He shuffled past me toward the bed, which rested at an angle in the living room. “A herald or messenger.” He tossed the cane onto it and laid down.
“Is that why it’s white?”
“Once all ravens were white.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes,” he nodded. “And they sang beautiful birdsong. Like a thrush. Or a nightingale.”
“What happened?” I asked as he draped his arm over his eyes, like maybe the light was bothering him.
“Mankind angered the gods,” he sighed weakly, “who took away man’s fire in punishment. The world grew cold. Winter came, and men starved. Feeling pity, the earth mother asked raven, the trickster and thief, to fly to the abode of the gods and steal back fire for man.”
“Did she?”
“Oh, yes. Raven was a trickster. And a thief. She knew all the secret places. And on the long journey back to earth, carrying burning coal in her beak and breathing its smoke, raven’s white plumes turned dark with soot, and her once beautiful voice grew hoarse. So it is the ravens of earth are black as soot and have a crooked cry.”
“Oh.”
He took a long breath and let it out, as if he wanted to sleep. His breathing was heavy. I watched it. I saw the little totem pole on the table. The two pieces at the top were still blank. I looked at the kitchen, which was open to the living area. It didn’t seem like he had any food.
“How come you won’t eat?”
“I did something. Long ago. And I am trying very hard to make amends.”
“Mends?” He closed his eyes and I took a better look at him. He was so skinny I could see the skin of his neck throb with each heartbeat. “Is it working?”
He chuckled. “Like with all great sacrifices, I won’t ever know.”
I think that meant he had to die for it to work.
“Maybe I could help instead.”
He smiled at me. “You’re a good boy. And I have appreciated your company. More than you know. But you have enough to deal with, I think.” He raised himself up in the bed with a groan. “It’s an apparition. Your secret. A fear-eater. People think it haunts closets and the spaces under our beds, but what it truly haunts is our minds. We simply project our fears into those other places. And it is that which sustains it.”
He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slow. His hands were shaking.
“Like a bogeyman?”
“Yes. That’s it exactly.” He was wheezing. “It is a bogeyman.”
I walked to the sink and got him a glass of water. All he had in any of the cupboards was a stack of red plastic cups.
“It will be close,” he said. “Every child it has attacked has been in your neighborhood, near the little forest behind your house.”
The hollow! That was it. That’s where I was when it attacked me. I felt better right away, and I thought maybe I was right to come for help, even though it probably meant Dad would send me away forever and I’d never see him or Mom or Wilson or Sudoku ever again.
“But you cannot sacrifice yourself like you did before.” He took the cup and drank. “It is not the creature you knew. It has been feeding. Growing strong.”
“What do I do?”
He leaned back again. “It will be powerful now, after so much feasting. More powerful, I fear, than a child.” He looked at his shaking hands. He shook his head. He laid down. “And no one who can help knows I am here.” He chuckled. “That is why I came.”
“I can do it.”
He closed his eyes. “But you shouldn’t have to,” he sighed. “Not by yourself.”
“But I can,” I pleaded.
He opened his hollow eyes again. “To trap a waking nightmare, you need a dreamcatcher. Have you seen one of those?”
I nodded.
He sat up. “This is a special kind. You will need many things.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you will get them. I have no money. I have given it all away. And your father has fired me.”
“What kind of things?”
He tore a piece of paper from a junk mail flyer on the floor and found a pen and started to draw. I stood next to the table and watched. His hands were shaking so bad.
“A small hoop. As perfectly round as you can make it. Some string to weave and make this pattern. It looks complicated but it’s simple to make. Do you see? Over and under at each of these three points to make nesting triangles, like a funnel.”
I watched. I nodded again.
“Below it you must hang a symbol of the apparition you want to catch, such as a form it likes to take. You also need something shiny, to get its attention. It needs only to look. It is a dream, so one glance is enough to snare it.” He kept drawing with shaking hands. Then he got tired and had to stop. He was so weak. And breathing hard. “But most importantly, you will need a birthstone. To trap it.”
I looked at the pictures he drew in the blank space between the everyday low prices.
He leaned back against the fake wood on the wall. “What month were you born?”
“December,” I said.
“Of course.” He shut his eyes and breathed hard. “Do you know what turquoise looks like? It was prized by Native Americans.”
I didn’t respond. I was staring at the page. I had seen those things. Everything he had drawn. All of them. A ring. String to weave around it. Something shiny. Everything.
It was the raven’s collection. She had brought me everything I needed to trap the fear-eater, the bogeyman. To thank me for saving her.
I pulled the blue pebble out of my pocket. “Is this it?”
Mr. Étranger froze perfectly still. He stared at the stone in my hand. Then he looked into my eyes. He was still. Then he said something strange. Something I didn’t understand. It was just a whisper.
Then he added, “Every time I played the flute, you came . . .”
I looked at the picture he drew. I frowned.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I had everything. All of it. But I lost something. My dad took and threw it away.”
“Are you sure you don’t know where it is?” he asked.
I nodded.
“This is very important. Are you certain you aren’t just saying that? Are you certain it is well and truly lost?”
I nodded again. I tried not to cry. The white raven had given me everything I needed to stop the fear-eater, to save Trevor who didn’t say his S’s right, but I wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it all. I let my dad throw the Frisbee away. I thought Mr. Étranger would be disappointed with me. But he wasn’t. He pointed to a coat hanging near the door. It wasn’t like any coat I had seen.
“Reach into the pocket,” he said.
“But my dad threw it away,” I said.
“Reach into the pocket,” he urged. “If it is truly lost, it will be found.”
I walked to the jacket. It was smoky colored and had big flaps in the front that closed with funny buttons. I reached into the pocket and felt a plastic ring. I pulled out the Frisbee. It wasn’t a different one. It was the same kid’s size yellow ring with the broken hollow center.
I turned to Mr. Étranger. I was so confused.
“Good boy,” he said with a nod. “Well done.”
I put my arm through the ring like it was a bracelet. I folded the picture he made and put it in my pocket with the pebble. I picked up my backpack. I opened it and pulled out the snacks my dad had packed for me: fruit gummies and peanut butter crackers and a banana. I left them on the table next to the cup of water.
He just watched. “They brought me right to you,” he said, as if it were the most amazing thing he’d never considered.
“Who?” I put my backpack on and walked to the door.
“Ólafur . . .” He looked at me intently. “Use the shell, the boundless ocean, as a prison, just as I have shown in the picture. Seal it with the stone. It will try to fill your mind with fear, then devour it whole. You must not succumb. Or you will be lost forever. Do you understand?”
Mr. Étranger had told me how to trap my secret. That meant he thought I could do it. No one had ever thought I could do anything. Not by myself.
“I can do it,” I repeated. “I promise.”
“It will not be so easy. The bogeymen attack children because they are vulnerable and easier to scare. A good friend of mine once lost his younger brother to a fear-eater—a boy around your age, no less brave than you. It trapped him in a basement and gave him nightmares until he died. They are not to be taken lightly. Do you understand?”
I nodded. I opened the door, and he raised a hand in parting, like he was afraid he wasn’t going to see me again.
Then he said, “Whatever I have left is yours.” His tattoos were almost gone. There was only one left, right in the middle of his hand: a perfect circle. I thought it had been in two halves before. But now it was whole.